Magarena successor : Dreamwalkers

[ubeefx]

Thanks. Will do.

[ubeefx]

Another pair of screens showing the difference between the enhanced mode and updated regular mode.
While it is still nicer to have full scale card art, the visual gap has become smaller.

Dreamwalkers screens

Notice on the Bear on stack how tapping is replaced with sleeping, represented by the full moon.
This is certainly appropriate for the theme of the game.
Also notice how everything is displayed on the cards, like the damage on the Bear.
Symbols are used in rule text, like life and end of turn, to make it as short as possible.

Next update will be when I finally have some generated cards.

[mtgrares]

The artwork and the user interface look very nice.

[ubeefx]

Thanks! The artwork is collected on the web with various searches.
That is the best I can do for now. Still it does take a lot of time to find however.

I have some more details on how I will likely distribute the game at first.
The game download will contain the Windows executable, jar and a pdf manual.
So again no installers as you are already used to from Magarena.
I will probably rent some cheap web space and a domain to host this.

The game will be playable for trial purposes without time timit. I think this is very important.
Some features will be restricted however :
- two themes instead of twelve
- only one fixed color combination to play with instead of ten combinations
- no selectable player avatar
- no sound effects
- no enhanced card images
- license dialog at startup

To license, you will have to enter your email in the license dialog.
Then a code will be generated to the clipboard.
That code will have to be included as remark in the Paypal transaction.
I will email the activation code and you can play the full game.
This code will be system dependent.
Price is whatever you want to pay with 5 euro minimum.
Once you have a license, future updates to base game are free.

[Boom2010]

The game will be playable for trial purposes without time timit. I think this is very important.
Some features will be restricted however :

Rather pleased to hear that you will be adopting this approach, especialy for something that is completely new. Well done!

Looking forward to this even more!!

[Huggybaby]

I like this distribution approach also. It worked pretty well for MWS.

I use a recording software that is completely uncrippled, forever. The only catch is a nag screen that lasts about eight seconds. The screen says how many times you've run the software, and for how long you've used it. Believe me, like a pebble in your shoe, after a while even five seconds becomes a long time, and it's a constant prod to pay up

When the software is so reasonably priced, and the developer trusts his users, then many payments should follow. Sure, some will never pay for the software, and some will find a crack to get rid of the nag screen, no matter how brief.

But the dev who respects his users, and only cares to appeal to those who are honest anyway, will gain much respect and good will. Good will can't be bought, it must be earned, and users nowadays know the difference.

[ubeefx]

I like the small startup delay idea for the trial.

An important reason to have a trial is to allow people to experience the game.
Otherwise interest could be really low.
The beta testing phase will be important to get feedback about the game.
Advantage of beta testing will be that you get a free key!

About cracks, well if this game would get cracked, then it is a sign people like it.
But I did at least some effort to make that not very trivial.
So it will take more than unzipping the jar, decompiling some classes and changing some ifs.

[pedro1973]

Looks like you're doing a great job.

Let's just wait and see:)

[mtgrares]

The screenshots look very good, just like a commercial project. I enjoyed reading this post by an indie developer about piracy.

The Final Answer For What To Do To Prevent Piracy

[ubeefx]

Thanks for the link, it was an interesting article.
I think I will tie the key just to the email and not the MAC address and OS.
Because that is annoying for people who want to switch computers.
Preventing piracy is not possible if people like your game.
A closed system like consoles use can help a bit, but even that is cracked.

I am still working on the game. I hope to have a first beta in August.

[ubeefx]

Here are some new Dreamwalkers screens with generated cards :

• Most screens use the enhanced card images.
• The mouse over zoom feature is visible on some screens, notice the magnifying glass.
• The regular zoom feature works by clicking on a card.
• Sleeping (= tapped) minions are shown with the full moon, minions that can't sleep have a chain.
• Cards can also cost life to play, see top right corner, when level differs or colored mana usage is exhausted.

Card generator is nearly finished and most of the game design is done.
There is still a lot of UI work left and saving and loading support.
But as said before, I hope in August beta testing will have started.

If this game would become popular, then it could be a nice hobby to keep maintaining it.
I think it could be sold over a longer time span, because these type of games should age slower.
Now I am putting nearly all my spare time into this, which is a bit much.
But I have little choice if a want to do the first release in September, it is simply a lot of work.

[Aswan jaguar]

Really nice card art ubfeex. I saw some great images there!
How many cards you have created so far?
More important do you use some kind of algorithm to keep the cards cost - power of the cards balanced?just being curius.

[ubeefx]

Thanks!

I do not really create cards, the card generator will do that.
I program card templates which can be used by the generator.
Adding new templates would allow generating several new cards.

There are 4 card types : minion, effect, gear and totem.
For minions there are a number of sub types, like Knight, each having a separate card art.
Total number of different card arts will be quite low, 55 at the moment.

Costs are more or less arbitrary chosen at the moment and should be fine for common cards.
There are also uncommon, rare and epic card rarities which will be gradually more powerful for the cost.
The beta testing might help improve these. Collecting cards will be an important part of the game.
In the end you will probably have collected a deck with lots of powerful cards.

[ubeefx]

The card generator is finished. Hard to tell how many different cards it can generate, it will be thousands.
There are now 60 unique card arts. This is certainly one of the things that can expand in future.
As visible in the screens, it is also possible to play games with these cards.

Now I still need to code the game quest mode.
The quest structure will be quite straightforward. There are 8 levels.
Each level will give the player increased stats, like more life.
On each level the player has to defeat 3 enemy mages and a boss mage.
These mages will have randomly generated decks. The boss decks might have a theme.
Playing games will give the player new cards, which can be used to improve the deck.
So the deck will gradually become more powerful during the game, but always contain cards of two colors.
At the start of a quest, the player needs to choose one of the 10 possible two color combinations.
Each quest will be very different this way, giving replayability value.

[ubeefx]

I did some rough calculations, because there are too much possibilities to give an exact number.
For each type of minion there will be ten thousands of possible cards that can be generated.
The numbers rapidly increase with rarity, with epic rarity giving the most possibilities.
There are currently 54 minion types, 50 colored and 4 colorless.
So I think that every game will play quite differently.

I will probably use the donationware model.
If you donate 5 Euro or more, you get a code to unlock some extra features.
Like extra themes, sound effects, enhanced card images.
This is a soft way of protecting, because it is easy to share the code.
It will be linked to the email address used to donate.
The game will be fully playable without the code.